The Northern Ring - A Plea to St. Brigid

The ring of earth shines northward, from Nottingham, Kiev, Vancouver and Kildare.
From boreal to taiga, it's trees grow dark;
Down into the deep crevices of ever expanding roots.
While branches are continually thrust upwards into the blue carbonated skies.
Swaddled there,in their own misty biomes
Moist leaf clusters continuously sprout stubby, spruce, needles.

Leaf clusters, whose refulgence from space, have a luster
Like trillions of slivered diamonds packed into
Trillions of open cargo crates for almonds,
They perch, and purposefully reflect the heat of the sun.
They cool their place on earth while collectively shading
Their cold, underground root tunnels that burrow
Deep, down into the arable, nitrous earth.

The ring of earth connects in a vertex under the roads
Running northward from Nottingham, Kiev, Vancouver and Kildare.
This vertex of roots, joined in an intricate celtic knot,
Whose tentacles protect neighboring trees and saplings,
Extend ever outwards, absorbing water.
Waters from the swaddling mists, waters from the falling rains,
Waters from the snow-melt rivers,
Waters from deep inside the sacred wells, where clooties hang on branches.

The ring of earth grows large,
In lofty places, as forests grow large, extending
Northward from Nottingham, Kiev, Vancouver and Kildare.
Boreal wood fibers, long and sinewy,
Perfect for paper production, are taken there.
Spruce, stripped by ringed cutters and felled,
The clear cut acres seen from space resemble dry, lusterless, spots on the ring.
Reports from daily papers indicate, demand
(even factoring in rigorous recycling), far exceeds supply.
With few spaces left, these forests are no longer
A renewable resource, our needs are that insatiable.

Reaching inward to the pulp, fibers are pulled free from trunks
In a watery, chemically-infused separating process
Their textures sometimes bleached, then woven into
Matte, silk and glossy finishes and sold.
The buyer, running the rolled, papered sheets through a printing press,
Fashions the volumes, the words into poetry books.
I found them today, lying on a shelf, covered in dust.

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St. Brigid of Kildare, our Patron Saint of poetry, sacred wells and printing presses,
Protect too our boreal forests from depletion and from fire. Let the diamond clustered needles
shine outward to eternity, let the forests' root vertex always expand protectively,
And please help our poetry to flourish and be enjoyed by generations yet to come.

Canada's boreal forest comprises about one third of the circumpolar boreal forest that rings the northern hemisphere, mostly north of the 50th parallel
clootie. cloth strip tied to trees surrounding wells
Kildare Ireland 53 degrees north latitude